Trinity College School - Record Yearbook (Port Hope, Ontario Canada)

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TRINITY COLLEGE SCHOOL RECORD 11 Huxley and fulfilled by Huxley and Osler. I would like to see the definition inscribed on the walls of every university in the English-speaking world. , That man, I think, has had a liberal education, who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of 3 whose intellect is a clear, cold logic engine with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order, ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind. lYou know what is meant by gossamers. They are those little films of thin webs that float in the air or are poised upon the grass in autumn, catching the sheen of the dew- drops and the glint of the sun.J And then the description of the educated man continues, Whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations, and who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but Whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience 3 who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of Art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself. Osler was that rare sort of man. He left, too, many lessons for us, all written and spoken in words that deserve to survive the rusts and ravages of time. The philosophy of his which I like best is that which he sets out in his most famous lecture, on The Way of Life. I have already said how full of life he was, of its joy and its purpose. And so, when he talked to the students at Yale University, he begged them to live in the present, to spend their lives doing and hoping. Sufficient to the day is the goodness thereof. Undress your soul at night and feel the joy that you are alive. Study books, but also men. Keep a fair mind and a fair body, be temperate in all things. He bade them always remember, with Carlyle. that our duty is not to see what lies dimly at a distance,

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10 TRINITY COLLEGE SCHOOL RECORD a life rich in great achievement. His greatness lies in that rare combination of noble thought, noble words and noble action. He not only thought great things but he got them done. If he taught and preached, he also organized. Every medical school which he entered was changed and made a living thing by his own joy of life and practical sympathy for his fellows. The medical student, the nurse, the patient, all found a new purpose and a new hope in his presence. Malice and envy were silent before him, and although he spoke no evil and thought no evil of his brothers and sisters, he never lacked courage or allowed personalities to bar the road to what he believed was right and good. He was unique also in his day because he had a thorough knowledge of medicine and science, and the scientific method, yet he was able to clothe his thoughts with grace and power. He spent all his time with magnificence. He was con- tinually surprising his friends by the things he knew and the use he was able to make of the hours which God had given him. He was punctual in his habits and nearly every waking moment was devoted to the great purpose of his life, the relief of human suffering, the pursuit of wisdom, and the teaching of the young doctor and nurse. He had a passion for work and in one of his most famous addresses he called Work the master word of his profession. He knew, as most great men before him and after him, that labour is the price which the gods have placed upon everything that is precious. I have often thought too that in many ways the two best educated men of their time were Thomas Huxley of England, and William Osler of Canada. They both combined a deep knowledge of the theory and the practice of scientific truth with a shining ability to express themselves in clear, simple and vital language. Last year I was at a meeting in Oidord and listened to famous scholars stating that the greatest need of the age was a liberal education, or the education fit for a free man. Such an education was defined by

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12 TRINITY COLLEGE SCHOOL RECORD but to do what lies clearly at hand. He knew also and practised the humility of the seeker, the painstaking care, the persistence that searches for conclusions and does not jump at them, the wonder and the devotion that have always been the glories of true science. He never believed that Science at last would darken men's eyes and harden men's hearts, but that its mission was to bring healing to mankind and joy and leisure to man's life. He also walked in that fine tradition of Medicine that has always laid the gifts of its discovery freely and without payment upon the altar of suffering humanity. When he was a young man he promised that he would never enter the temple of Science in the spirit of the money-changer. He never did. When he was an older man, he could make his own, with truth, the proud boast of the Greek philosopher: I have loved no darkness Sophisticated no truth Nursed no illusion Allowed no fear. Those are a few of the reasons why I call him Great. But greatness and goodness are not always the same thing. May I tell you, as I bid you farewell, a few of the reasons why he deserves to be called good? I think one of the mottoes of his life was Two things stand like stoneg Kindness in another's trouble, Courage in one's own. For everybody who knew Osler or wrote about him or has spoken to me about him, dwells upon the all-pervading sympathy which marked his nature and his work. So many of his deeds were those unremembered acts of kindness and of love that mark a good man's life. He knew that that man is the greatest whose heart contains within it the most objects of compassion. He knew, too, that of all the words which men have brought with them from their